‘The detective,’ she said with cold reluctance. ‘He was looking for this man. The man was passing himself off as Claudio, and now he has disappeared. He thinks – oh, heaven knows what he thinks. That perhaps he has something to do with Claudio’s – with his—’ And she stopped short, as if the word had escaped her. Death. Was that the word?
Careful not to tear the paper, Roxana prised it open, laying it on the desk, and smoothed it flat. The image had been distorted further now, but she could see enough. She went on smoothing, but there it was. She felt Val come close to look over her shoulder, she could smell his aftershave.
‘It’s him,’ she said and she realized that Val, like a child, was repeating it just fractionally late over her shoulder.
‘It’s him.’
She turned and looked at him, not feeling like laughing.
‘Who?’ said Marisa: she spoke sharply, like a teacher suspecting her pupils of insubordination. ‘It’s who?’
*
‘What?’ said Luisa to Anna Niescu, taking her arm. ‘What’s that expression mean?’
The girl was leaning against the fence outside the apartment block, the bougainvillea behind it tumbling over her small shoulder like a bridal wreath. She had one hand against the side of her belly and the other holding on to the railing.
Luisa hadn’t wanted her to come. It was half an hour on the bus, they ran erratically at the best of times, let alone in August. And she hadn’t even wanted to look at that ridiculous thermometer Sandro had installed on the bathroom windowsill. They said the weather was going to break tomorrow. Thunder, coming down from the Alps.
Anna’s face was intent, and she didn’t seem willing to move or speak.
‘Does it hurt?’ asked Luisa. The girl shook her head minutely, and slowly her expression cleared.
‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘They told me at the clinic, these are just normal, it all goes hard for a few moments, the muscles are squeezing. Not contractions, just – just something else. Preliminary.’
‘Preliminary?’ said Luisa, not liking the sound of the word. She glanced at the dark lobby of the apartment block and saw that the glass door had been propped open by a builder’s ladder. A builder’s van was parked on the street: August.
‘For the last few months. Look,’ said Anna, and gestured down as if Luisa would be able to see. ‘Not squeezing any more. Not tight.’
She reached for Luisa’s hand and, before she could protest, set it against her stomach. Firm and warm and strong, was how it felt, then against her hand something pushed, the knobbed protrusion of a joint, a heel or an elbow. Anna’s eyes met Luisa’s for just a second, then Luisa took her hand away.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ she said.
‘It’s better already,’ said Anna. ‘Better than the last time. When I was alone, and no one would let me in.’ She looked up at the building’s façade. ‘It’s around there,’ she said. ‘The other side. With the view of the hills.’
They stood at the gate and looked, both suddenly hesitant. Then Luisa punched in the code Giovanna Baldini had given her, skirted the ladder and they were inside. Standing in the darkened hallway, they didn’t know what to do next.
They’d had to come: Anna had insisted. ‘I won’t know until I’m there,’ she had said. ‘I – there. Inside the apartment, then I’ll know what it was that bothered me.’
But now that they were here, she seemed to have run out of steam.
‘I don’t like this place,’ she said, her face moon-pale in the gloom. ‘I would never have wanted to live here.’
‘No,’ agreed Luisa absently, glancing down the side hall to the concierge’s door. Then recovered herself, ‘I mean, it’s a perfectly good neighbourhood, good for children …’ She tailed off. She frowned at Anna. ‘You never said that before. That you didn’t like it.’
‘I didn’t think that before,’ said Anna, her mouth downturned. ‘When he showed it to me, he was so proud of it. So pleased – he was trying to see it in the best light. So I tried too. I could have told him, I have some money, we can find somewhere better.’
Luisa squeezed her hand, thinking of Anna’s tiny savings. ‘Did he – did you ever tell him you had money?’ The girl shook her head. Luisa nodded approvingly. ‘Good girl,’ she said, and Anna’s head jerked up, defiant.
‘He wouldn’t have taken my money,’ she said in a dear voice. ‘Everything was going well for him, he said. Soon everything would be done, everything would be ready, just another few days. He was so excited.’
‘Like he had a secret?’
‘Something like that,’ said Anna. ‘That’s why – well, when I didn’t hear from him at the weekend, but actually weekends are anyway his busy time – I just thought, Monday, he’s busy with – whatever it is.’ Her eyes were dark. ‘I just thought, he’s got everything ready for the baby.’ And she looked up the stairwell, towards the light. The walls were scuffed and dirty.
‘Yes,’ said Luisa, stroking her shoulder. ‘Wait here a minute.’
Reluctantly, she tiptoed down the dark side-corridor to the door. There was that sour smell of alcohol breath and unwashed linen. She knocked. Called. Cupped her hands against the door and shouted. Nothing. From upstairs, some banging.
Luisa’s heart sank: what next? She hadn’t thought this through. Why would either of them be any more likely to get into the place this time?
All right. ‘Let’s go up,’ she said, returning to Anna, trying to sound as though she knew what she was doing. ‘There’s – ah, someone I know lives upstairs.’
They pressed the button for the lift but nothing happened. Perhaps that was what the builders were here for. They took the stairs. Anna moved steadily, stopping for breath at the top of each flight. It had been relatively cool at the bottom but with every upward step it grew warmer.
On the third floor – her floor – Anna stopped again, but this time she looked as though she didn’t want to go on. There were four doors, of flimsy-looking veneer, each with a spyhole. Watching Anna, Luisa shifted from foot to foot: something was sticking to her leather soles. The floor was gritty underfoot.
Sounds were coming from behind the furthest door: scraping. A thump. Men’s voices, in a foreign language.
‘That one,’ said Anna, nodding towards the furthest door as if she didn’t want to get any closer to it.
‘It’s all right,’ said Luisa, glancing up towards the light filtering down from the top of the building. None of the stairway lights seemed to be working – another job for the builders. It was hard to see what the concierge was paid for. Perhaps they’d actually laid him off. ‘Giovanna’s on the next floor up. Let’s see if she’s in.’
Another flight of stairs was asking more than she’d anticipated, though: as Anna walked ahead of her with painful slowness, Luisa cursed herself for not calling Giovanna before they left, or buzzing her bell at the gate to confirm she would be in, after all this.
‘They said, take exercise,’ said Anna, out of breath, catching sight of Luisa’s expression. ‘Good exercise, climbing stairs. I can’t just lie in bed forever.’
‘When was your last check-up?’ said Luisa grimly, holding her under the arm as they took the last step together. Stupid, stupid, stupid: how could I have been so stupid? Eight months pregnant and I’ve got her climbing stairs. ‘Stop,’ she commanded, and examined the girl’s face. Pink, but better, actually, better in the light, better one floor higher.
‘Monday,’ said Anna, ‘at the Women’s Centre, it’s every week now. They say I’m doing well. They say the baby’s big.’
They both looked down and Luisa felt the coolness of fear, like a shadow falling across her. Anna was so small.
‘Do you have any children?’ asked Anna, frowning up at her. Then, ‘Oh, Giuli said – said something—’
‘My baby didn’t live,’ said Luisa, and with the words she felt breathless. She tried to smile, heard herself stammer. ‘There was something the matter with her �
�� in those days, there wasn’t the … the information.’ Anna’s eyes were on her, intent. ‘It wasn’t anything to do with the birth.’ And Luisa found she could hardly think of another word to say. ‘You mustn’t worry,’ she managed, eventually. She paused, collected herself. ‘So your last appointment was on Monday.’
Anna searched her face, then looked down at her belly again. ‘That was when I asked Giuli.’ She bit her lip. ‘She saw me crying, because I hadn’t heard from Josef, because they’d said maybe a scan to see how big the baby was and I tried to call him to tell him and he wasn’t answering and I really got frightened then.’
‘All right,’ said Luisa, taking her hand, alarmed by her sudden distress. ‘It’s going to be OK.’
‘She’d told me what she did when she wasn’t working at the Centre, a while back. Told me about Sandro. What a nice man he is.’
‘Yes,’ said Luisa, looking away, turning to watch the stairwell.
‘I thought he’d be able to help.’ Anna’s breathing was better now; Luisa concentrated on that.
If only being a good man solved everything. There was a sound from upstairs, a door opening tentatively, and from somewhere else in the building a dog began to yap.
‘Come on,’ said Luisa quickly. ‘Can you make another flight?’
They saw her feet first, and Luisa knew it was Giovanna Baldini, in grubby slippers, standing behind a door open not much more than a crack. When she saw them, she opened it wider.
‘Thought it was you,’ she said. And leaned aside to get a better look at Anna, half hidden behind Luisa. ‘And you brought the girl.’
Anna came alongside Luisa on the landing and looked at Giovanna, serious under her dark brows.
‘Not much of a girl any more,’ she said with dignity.
Giovanna Baldini stood aside and let them in.
‘It’s the same,’ said Anna under her breath, stopping short in the hallway. ‘It’s the same as his.’
‘Right above it,’ said Giovanna straight away, ushering them on. The apartment was cluttered and warm, but it smelled clean. Luisa sometimes wondered if smell was the most developed of her senses, and she had a particular response to the way an old woman’s flat could smell – as she approached being an old woman herself, it was becoming a kind of paranoia. Food kept too long, that was the best of it. Giovanna was watching her with a half-smile.
‘You’re wondering, do we let ourselves go earlier, single women?’ Luisa smiled the same half-smile back. ‘I’m hanging on,’ said Giovanna comfortably.
They watched Anna, moving through the apartment, looking into one room then another, towards the lighter room they could both see ahead of them down the central hallway.
Coming into that room – a living room, by the look of a low sofa piled with mismatched cushions – Luisa saw Anna put up a hand to her left, feeling for something. A light switch.
Anna turned back to look down the corridor at them.
‘That was one thing,’ she said. ‘He didn’t know where the light switches were.’ She stood silhouetted in the doorway, almost all belly. ‘He didn’t know where anything was. It was – as if he’d never been there before.’
She turned away again, and Luisa and Giovanna followed her into the room. It was wide, with one glazed door opening on to a long balcony, one window further along. Both were shuttered against the setting sun, but light leaked through.
They watched as, alert, Anna walked around the space. ‘Bigger,’ she said. ‘This room is bigger. Than downstairs.’
‘Some have them divided off, they make another room,’ said Giovanna. ‘I didn’t need to do that. It’s just me here.’
Anna looked at her, unseeing. ‘That was going to be the nursery,’ she said in a stifled voice, and held out both arms as if taking the room’s measurements. ‘Can I go out?’ she asked abruptly. ‘On to the balcony?’
Giovanna crossed to the glazed doors and pushed them open; the light that fell inside was soft and yellow. It must be getting late. ‘Let me get you a glass of water,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said Luisa.
Anna smiled faintly. As if water will solve my problems, she seemed to be saying. But ‘Thank you’ was all she said. She stepped through the doors, and for a second as she disappeared Luisa felt a great surge of panic. What if–what if she—?
But hurrying out on to the balcony all she saw was Anna standing there, solid in the evening sun, her feet set wide apart to give her balance and both hands on the concrete parapet. Giovanna appeared beside them with the glass of water.
‘Have you remembered,’ said Luisa, ‘what it was? What was wrong, when you came here with him?’
Anna was looking at the view: a slice of view at any rate, between another apartment block and some abandoned farm buildings that no doubt would soon become more apartments. A view, not perfect, but good enough, of hills to the south-west, darkening as the sun set behind them, the motorway just audible and intermittently visible. She wondered whether Anna had even heard what she said but then the girl turned her head.
‘I think so,’ she said, the sun glowing apricot on her face. She took the glass of water that Giovanna held out and sipped.
‘Something was wrong?’ said Giovanna. She looked at Luisa questioningly.
‘When her … fiancé brought Anna here to see their apartment,’ she replied.
‘It might be nothing,’ said Anna.
‘What?’ said Luisa.
Anna drained the glass and handed it back. ‘The keys,’ she said. ‘The keys to the apartment.’ She frowned. ‘They weren’t right. He said they were his keys, but—’
‘The keys?’ Luisa tried to remember what Anna had told her about the keys. There’d been something. ‘The – the Ferrari keyfob? Was it that?’
‘That,’ said Anna, nodding. ‘That – he would never have had such a keyring, he wasn’t interested in cars, not at all. He didn’t even have a car, said he didn’t see why you would need one in a city.’
‘Right,’ said Luisa, waiting.
‘There was a label on the keys,’ said Anna carefully.
‘A label? What kind of label?’
‘A little card, tied with cotton, like you might have in a shop, you know, a little price tag.’
Luisa frowned, head on one side, trying to picture it, knowing there was something about this picture she would recognize, eventually – only Giovanna got there first.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘that would be the agent, wouldn’t it? The estate agent’s tag, they put a tag on the key when they’re selling a property, telling you who it belongs to? What property it belongs to. So they don’t get them mixed up.’
‘But it was his place,’ said Anna, and her lower lip stuck out, like a stubborn child’s. ‘He said it was his.’
The older women looked at her.
‘He didn’t know where anything was,’ said Luisa softly.
‘They’ve been trying to sell it for years,’ Giovanna added, her head on one side as she watched Anna. ‘It’s on the market.’
‘Maybe he bought it,’ said Anna defiantly. ‘Maybe he was renting it.’ There was a silence, in which Luisa tried to think how to soften this.
‘He … it’s possible he just … he was just … borrowing it,’ she said at last.
Just as he borrowed Claudio Brunello’s identity. Buying time.
From below them there was a dull thud and an explosion of fine debris blew out through a window, dusting the trees. All three women leaned down to look, and the powder-white face of a man in overalls looked back up at them.
‘Hi,’ said Giovanna breezily.
He raised a hand tentatively and said something guttural in a language none of them understood.
‘Got the builders in,’ said Giovanna. ‘Maybe they’ve sold the place at last.’ She looked from Luisa to Anna, then back. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You want to know what’s going on down there? Come on, then.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
BY THE TIME
LUISA walked back through her door on the Via dei Macci, it was dark outside.
Giuli had been making excuses for Luisa while they waited. ‘You know there’s hardly any phone coverage,’ she’d said. ‘Inside an apartment building, for example, or in a particular street. The Via dei Bardi, for example, that’s a killer. San Niccolo in general, tucked in under the hillside there …’
Sandro had let her talk, fretting silently, barely even picking up on her mention of San Niccolo and what an undesirable place it could be to live.
‘They’ll be fine,’ she had finished up, uncertainly.
‘So why didn’t she leave a note?’
‘You know Luisa,’ Giuli had said, and that was the end of that conversation.
And all Luisa had said when she did return was, ‘Don’t be daft. It’s a Thursday in August, there aren’t even any cars, what were you worried about? That I’d be run over by a watermelon seller?’
Giuli had stood there in that stance again, arms tightly folded against her body, and a frown etched on her face.
‘Not you too?’ said Luisa. ‘Come on.’
It was bravado, though. Sandro knew her too well.
‘It might be August,’ he said, ‘but people seem to still be getting murdered. For nothing, some of them.’
‘People?’ Luisa pulled out a chair and sat with weary resignation. Reluctantly, Giuli let her arms drop and sat down next to her. They looked at him warily.
Sandro wished he could take it back now. ‘Oh, nothing. A mugging, carjacking or something on the south side, Pietro mentioned it.’ Luisa nodded, her face betraying nothing.
‘Where’s Anna?’ asked Giuli.
‘She wanted to go home,’ said Luisa, then let out a dry, small laugh. ‘Home.’ She shook her head. ‘Poor kid. That dismal old place.’
‘It took three hours?’ said Sandro. ‘Just taking her over to Santo Spirito?’
‘Can you get me a glass of water?’ said Luisa mildly. ‘I’m parched.’
And she waited for him to turn his back, he knew, before she said, ‘We went over to the apartment in Firenze Sud. His apartment, supposedly, the one they were going to move into.’
Dead Season Page 24
